Better Software - March 2008 - (Page 48)

The Last Word Face-to-face meetings. It is important to meet your colleagues in person. It gives you context when you read their words later. In particular, when there is significant planning to be done, face-to-face meeting is important. Video and video chat. When you can’t meet faceto-face, video chat is a great alternative. How-to videos, particular blog posts, and documentation also benefit from sharing video. Wiki. Almost everyone has a wiki, but not many people use them effectively. Using a wiki well is a complex topic, but in a nutshell: If something requires coordination or discussion among many people, don’t use email—use a wiki. If something is meant to be shared from one person to many people or from one person to one person, use email. Logs. Internet Relay Chat logs (see below), wiki page revision history, email archives —log everything and make it searchable. A searchable history of communication provides a rich company culture. Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is a very old protocol, but it is an effective means of communication. With the ability to create channels instantly, log communication, extend the interface, etc., IRC has had a great resurgence in popularity in recent years. We’ve programmed our IRC bots to deliver everything from bug reports and wiki pages to weather reports and currency exchanges. Source control. It’s critical. If it isn’t in source control, it had better be in the wiki. The really compelling case for creating distributed teams is that the business is able to select from an immense pool of potential employees in order to get teams with exactly the skills needed to succeed. There are other benefits— reduced infrastructure cost and more flexibility with the physical plant—but being able to pick from a highly talented group of workers is very attractive. Managing distributed teams is perceived as being difficult, but that difficulty is evaporating as the processes and tools for doing this sort of work evolve. I remember a testing project from about ten years ago where the company spent a lot of time and effort creating intensely detailed requirements for a set of automated tests and sent those requirements off to a remote test-automation team. Some time later, after almost no communication with the remote automation team, they received code that was essentially worthless. Today, everyone involved would be in a daily standup meeting over VoIP. Team members would be in constant communication on IRC. Project management would be accomplished in a tool like a wiki. Code would be kept in a shared repository like SVN or CVS, and a continuous integration system would report test status for every check-in. The project code would be written in iterations, with pair programming and continuous feedback. Distributed or not, a successful team has the right mix of people, process, and tools. With the explosion of effective modern processes and tools, finding great people to make up a team no longer depends on where those people happen to live. {end} Display Advertising Index to Advertisers AutomatedQA Better Software Conference & Expo Empirix HP Software IBM Net Objectives Quest Software Rally Software SmartBear SQE eLearning SQE Training STAREAST 2008 StickyMinds.com TechExcel, Inc. 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Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - March 2008

Better Software - March 2008 Contents Mark Your Calendar Contributors eLightenment Technically Speaking Code Craft Test Connection Management Chronicles Cover Story: Breaking Ground On SOA Software Development Worst Practices Mind the Gap Product Announcements 10 Things You Might Not Know About... The Last Word Ad Index

Better Software - March 2008

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